There very well could be something magical about it.

It’s fine to think that—many clearly do.

But it would be more honest and productive imo if people would just say outright when they don’t think AGI is possible (or that AI can never be “real intelligence”) for religious reasons, rather than pretending there’s a rational basis.

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gls2ro 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

AGI is not possible because we dont yet have a clear and commonly agreed definition of intelligence and more importantly we dont have a definition for consciousness nor we can define clearly (if there is) the link between those two.

until we got that AGI is just a magic word.

When we will have those two clear definitions that means we understood them and then we can work toward AGI.

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3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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Mikhail_Edoshin 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When you try to solve a problem the goal or the reason to reject the current solution are often vague and hard to put in words. Irrational. For example, for many years the fifth postulate of Euclid was a source of mathematical discontent because of a vague feeling that it was way too complex compared to the other four. Such irrationality is a necessary step in human thought.

	▲	danenania 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, that’s fair. I’m not saying there’s no value to irrational hunches (or emotions, or spirituality). Just that you should be transparent when that’s the basis for your beliefs.

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habinero 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's not a good way to think about it.

Plenty of things could theoretically exist that aren't possible and likely will never be possible.

Like, sure, a Dyson sphere would solve our energy needs. We can't build one now and we almost certainly never will lol

"AGI" is theoretically feasible, sure. Our brains are just matter. But they're also an insanely complex and complicated system that came out of a billion years of evolution.

A little rinky dink statistical model doesn't even scratch the surface of it, and I don't understand why people think it does.

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danenania 2 days ago | parent [-]

> But they're also an insanely complex and complicated system that came out of a billion years of evolution.

As are birds, yet we can still build airplanes.

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player1234 a day ago | parent [-]

We know the laws of aerodynamics, what are the known laws of intelligence and consciousness you are replicating through other means with LLMs?

Weak ass gotcha, hang your head in shame, call your mom and tell her what a fraud you are.

	▲	danenania a day ago \| parent [-]
		Sorry you got triggered. I know it can be an emotional topic for some people. I'll try to explain in a simple way. We clearly are replicating at least some significant aspects of human intelligence via LLMs, despite biological complexity. So we obviously don't need a 100% complete understanding of the corresponding biology to build things which achieve similar goals. In other words, we can (conceivably) figure out how intelligence works and how to produce it independently of figuring out exactly how the human brain produces intelligence, just like we learned the laws of aerodynamics well enough to build airplanes independently of understanding everything about the biology of birds. Whether we will achieve this or not to the point of AGI is a separate engineering question. I'm only pointing out how flawed these lines of argument are.

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hitarpetar 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

rationalism has become the new religion. Roko's basilisk is a ghost story and the quest for AGI is today's quest for the philosopher's stone. and people believe this shit because they can articulate a "rational basis"